The federal minimum wage is $7.25. According to Zillow, the median price of rent in Nashville is $1,600. Do math, and the numbers don’t look great. “That’s some bleak shit,” Nashville artist REMMI says in her latest single “Minimum Wage.” The appropriately-titled track alternates between a hustler’s optimism to grind it out and the sobering reality of what low wage workers are really up against. It’s a pop masterwork in millennial gallows humor that calls out crippling college debt and fast food paychecks atop production that simultaneously slaps and sneers.
REMMI is the musical vehicle of talented songwriter Rachel Smith. “Minimum Wage” is the follow up to her 2017 NVDES collab “D.Y.T. (Do Your Things”), which landed on a high profile iPhone X ad, a 2016 cover of John Lennon’s “Imagine” we loved, and 2015’s excellent EP New America. Sonically, it’s a hard-hitting step forward from the smoother sounds of past releases, and REMMI’s social and political commentary keeps getting sharper.
Listen to “Minimum Wage” by REMMI below.
